As a companion piece to SafetyAtWorkBlog’s recent article on quad bike safety it is worth looking at the latest hardcopy edition of The Weekly Times, an influential agricultural newspaper in Australia. It is useful to look at how quad bikes are being depicted in the advertising and some of the content, as online versions have different adverts. The content will vary, of course, from edition to edition but a snapshot sample is interesting.
Discussion about gender in the workplace peaks each year around International Women’s Day on March 8. Occasionally there is renewed localised interest when an issue pops up but the issue of gender permeates our thoughts, our planning and our conduct all the time.
Recently, SafetyAtWorkBlog had the chance to ask some questions about gender and diversity and the relevance to the workplace and the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession to Alena Titterton (pictured above), a fascinating workplace relations lawyer with the Australian offices of Clyde & Co.
Gender diversity seems to be more prominent than diversity generally. Should gender diversity be given priority over, or be separated from, other categories such as ethnicity or sexuality?
Several readers have expressed curiosity over the WorkSafe Legislative Amendment Bill currently in the Victorian Parliament and mentioned by lawyer Steve Bell last week. Bell pointed to a couple of issues in the Bill and gave the impression that the Bill was aimed at tidying up some administration. Several of the issues raised in the Bill deserve contemplation.
The Bill is still not through Parliament. The next stage of the process will occur on April 5, 2017 but the Minster’s
Steve Bell is a partner with Hebert Smith Freehills (HSF) in Melbourne, Australia. As many law firms do, HSF conducts several events each year to inform clients and others of occupational health and safety (OHS) and labour relations issues. In March 2017 Bell, who is the regular host at these events, spoke at a breakfast seminar held jointly with the Safety Institute of Australia, and identified several safety issues as becoming prominent in 2017:
Below are some thoughts on the issues raised by Steve Bell.
It is rare to find an occupational health and safety (OHS) seminar that is captivating but there is almost always some useful bits of safety information, hopefully enough to make attendance worthwhile.
On March 24, 2017 the Safety Institute of Australia and Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) held the annual breakfast seminar in Melbourne. Speakers included representatives from the HSF law firm, the SIA, WorkSafe Victoria and SafeSearch. Perhaps of most interest was HSF’s senior associate from Perth, Sam Witton (pictured), who outlined the OHS changes likely in Western Australia now the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is in power.
Jargon can help create a subculture. This can be positive for those on the inside but relies on excluding others. Occupational health and safety (OHS) is no different and one of the best illustrations of OHS jargon is “practicable”. This was emphasised recently in a document released by WorkSafe WA where “practicable” had lost out to “practical”.
The guidance also omitted the duties of builders for the health and safety of those affected by their work.
There are many advocates of the importance of a mental health and wellbeing in workplaces. But few of them address the worst-case scenario for workplace mental health of work-related suicides. In some cases, the mental health advocates are overly cautious about even speaking the reality, which does not help reduce mental health stigma.
In 2016 Professor Stewart Clegg, of UTS Business School said that
“That work can kill the will to live is a fundamental ethical problem that we must attend to…”
New research from the UK provides a useful summary of the work-related and workplace suicides in Europe with important lessons of where precarious employment and the “gig economy” could lead.